SWI and Returns Policy
Shopping While Intoxicated (SWI) is reported to be on the rise. If you sell online, now is a good time to review your return policy.
The Search Engine Blog
News and Tips From The Search Marketing World
Google Invades Hotel Searches
Has Google gone overboard? Some people are reporting (http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adwords/4397179.htm) that selected hotel searches show Google’s own hotel comparison system above all paid advertising shoving natural searches way down the page below the fold. Is this too monopolistic? Will it help or hurt hotels and searchers?
Less Reporting, Not Filling. Google Providing Less Information
Your reports will show less traffic for phrases. If you are tracking which search terms people use in Google when landing on your site’s pages, you’ll start receiving less clicks for those terms. It doesn’t mean that you are receiving less traffic for those terms, it just means that Google isn’t reporting the information any longer. Privacy yet again drives reporting nuts as Google introduces more privacy protection. Details on how this works and impacts you is on the Google blog.
We are adding an event to our customer reporting so that any drops can be pinpointed to this change in Google practices. Make certain you do the same in your reporting methodology. If you can’t, maybe it’s time to have better reporting.
Die Buzz, Die. Google Kills Google Buzz and More
It’s Halloween season and time for dead things. It’s a good time for Google to announce pending deaths including Google Buzz. It is redundant now that Google+ is here. Full Google announcement here. The Buzz layer in Google Maps was removed already making many people unhappy souls sure to haunt Google’s hangouts.
Right Now Analytics From Google
What’s happening on your site right now, this very minute? We’ve been using Piwik to answer this question and finally Google has decided to offer it as announced in this Google Blog post. Better late than never. Will we stop using Piwik? Doubtful as it reports numbers differently than Google Analytics. It’s nice to get a second opinion.
Google+ in Ads and More…
Google announced on their Blogger blog that the +1 button will now appear in Google Ads. Naturally they want to know what kind of ads you like so they can show you more of the same. It’s up to you if you want to click it. You should start seeing ads more related to your tastes if you do so. Logging into your Google account all the time will of course make your experience more relevant. Advertisers seem to love and hate it with many of the typical fears and paranoia surrounding anything new. The proof will be in the results. Watch for the +1 buttons in more places as Google implements it in anything and everything that can possibly be voted upon.
Adaptive Search Remembers You
It’s following you and remembering where you’ve been. Bing is doing more to customize your search based on where it thinks you are, where you’ve been before and what you are searching. If you are logged into Bing, it will base it on up to 18 months of history. This does wreck havoc on marketers but may be beneficial to searchers. More on the Bing blog.
Social Media Very Important to Bing
Submit your site to Bing’s search engine? Know what is most important to them? 1. Content (duh) 2. Social Media (eh?) 3. Links. Social media is far more important than the links you have to your site. So Bing is using RSS feeds, has low tolerance with issues in sitemaps and considers user interaction with your site far more important than the links you have coming into your site. Summary: If you aren’t on Facebook, Twitter and the like and your competitors are, if likely that you aren’t going to do as well on Bing (other things being equal). More to read at StoneTemple. Is this a good time to mention that we offer Social Media Marketing?
Update on Google and Sub-domain Links
A few days ago we reported that Google was reporting on sub-domains differently. It appeared that this would also affect how Google ranked links from sub-domains. Not so says Google. It only impacts webmaster reporting and not much else. Perfectly clear now? Needless to say, the forums are buzzing with even more questions and speculation.
Google Now Treats SubDomains as Part of the Domain
In a major shift Google has announced that they are treating sub-domain links to the primary domain as an internal link. Previously Google treated sub-domains as a separate site. For example, if you have a link from forum.picturesqueweb.com to picturesqueweb.com, it was treated as an external link. Not any longer. Will this impact a lot of web site rankings? You bet! Will our customers following our advice be affected? Not at all. If you are a marketer and didn’t see this coming, you have horse blinders on. Customers using our landing page service are unaffected by this as well as customers using our social marketing articles services.